JAPAN COURT AGAIN DEPLORES INEQUITABLE ELECTION SYSTEM

Japan's Supreme Court ruled today that the most recent parliamentary elections, held in 1983, were unconstitutional because of procedural inequities that made some votes worth far more than others.

The court, however, declined to declare the election results invalid, arguing that to do so would run against the public interest.

It was the third time in the last nine years that Japan's highest court has denounced the country's election procedures, either in whole or in part.

Like the previous rulings, the decision today lacked teeth. But in both tone and substance it was regarded as stronger and thus more likely to have an effect on an electoral system that is widely deplored but rarely altered.

The immediate result will be to push the reapportionment issue to the top of the list of domestic priorities. Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, who was visiting Italy, said in a statement made public here that he would make ''the utmost effort'' to correct imbalances.

It raised a strong possibility of a special parliamentary session this fall to consider reapportionment plans. That, in turn, could unsettle the political calendar. With Parliament back in session, Mr. Nakasone might consider it a good time to dissolve it and hold elections for the House of Representatives, the more important lower chamber.

The 15-member court implied today that, after similar rulings in 1976 and 1983, it had grown weary of the Government's reluctance to change procedures weighted heavily in favor of the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party.

In the most extreme instance, the court said, a lower-house vote from rural Hyogo Prefecture, on the Sea of Japan, carried 4.4 times the value of a vote from crowded western Chiba, next door to Tokyo.

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Four justices, including Chief Justice Jiro Terada, suggested that if a similar case came before them again, they would consider overturning election results. ''The period rationally considered necessary for reform has long passed,'' they said in a joint statement attached to the majority opinion.

The vote on the ruling was 13 to 1, with one justice not taking part because he had not attended earlier hearings. The lone dissenter, Justice Masataka Taniguchi, disagreed only in wanting to declare some of the 1983 results invalid immediately.

Compared with the United States, courts here tend to be more cautious about interfering with what they regard as legislative functions. Consequently, the mere fact that a ruling like the one today was issued makes it difficult to ignore. It was only the fourth time that the Supreme Court has found a law to be in outright violation of the Constitution, adopted in 1947.

Despite a legal requirement that adjustments be made every five years, Parliament has not rearranged the seat distribution in the 511-member lower house since 1975. Imbalances are even greater in the upper chamber, the House of Councilors, where the discrepancy between urban and rural respresentation is as great as 5.67 to 1.

Farmers Are Mainstay of Party

Few changes have been made over the years because farmers are the mainstay of both the governing Liberal Democrats and, to a lesser extent, the leading opposition group, the Socialist Party. If the electoral system accurately reflected postwar population shifts to the cities, the principal beneficiaries would probably be relatively small but well-disciplined centrist groups and the Communist Party.

A Liberal Democratic bill introduced in the most recent regular legislative session would have taken six lower-house seats from farm areas and added them to big-city districts. But the proposal withered, in part because it had only half-hearted support from several Liberal Democratic leaders, who said they feared the redistricting would hurt their political machines.

Even if it had passed, the bill would not have brought the electoral process remotely close to the ''one man, one vote'' concept. In political circles, the accepted yardstick is that a bill will pass constitutional muster as long as the spread in rural-urban voting strength is no greater than 3 to 1.

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A version of this article appears in print on July 18, 1985, on Page A00010 of the National edition with the headline: JAPAN COURT AGAIN DEPLORES INEQUITABLE ELECTION SYSTEM. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe